Oil and gas extraction has been predominately led by only a handful of technologies for the past few decades. Now with the introduction of new developments to the industry, exploration and extraction have never been as efficient.
Galex Energy Corporation, for example, has developed a variety of innovative ways to displace hydrocarbons from rocks and dispel them towards the surface. They use acoustic soundwaves to crack oil-bearing rock in the oil well, forcing out the crude. It is worth noting that by using traditional extraction techniques, oil companies have historically gathered only 30% of available oil from wells.
Another approach gaining attention is that of directional, or, non-vertical drilling. By horizontally boring walls of the oil-field, a greater quantity of oil can be collected. As well as the ground-breaking microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) system. By feeding microbes which live in pockets of crude, an exponential multiplication of microbial species causes droplets of oil to split into micro-droplets, causing production to increase by over 90%. Though, this has not yet become commonplace.
These new methods are helpful to the industry due to the dwindling supply of oil in more famous fields such as the North Sea field. By implementing more modern technologies and creating a greater yield, the peak of these older sites oil production has been extended longer than ever before.
